Archaeology: Study of the Past

Nubia was also called - Upper & Lower Nubia, Kush, Land of Kush, Te-Nehesy, Nubadae, Napata, or the Kingdom of Meroei.

The region referred to as Lower Egypt is the northernmost portion. Upper
Nubia extends south into Sudan and can be subdivided into several
separate areas such as Batn El Hajar or "Belly of Rocks", the sands of
the Abri-Delgo Reach, or the flat plains of the Dongola Reach. Nubia,
the hottest and most arid region of the world, has caused many
civilizations to be totally dependent on the Nile for existence.

Historically Nubia has been a nucleus of diverse cultures. It has been
the only occupied strip of land connecting the Mediterranean world with
"tropical" Africa. Thus, this put the people in close and constant
contact with its neighbors for long periods of history and Nubia was an
important trade route between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the
world. Its rich material culture and tradition of languages are seen in
archaeological records.

The most prosperous period of Nubian civilization was that of the
kingdom of Kush, which endured from about 800 BC to about 320 AD. During
this time, the Nubians of Kush would at one point, assume rule over all
of Nubia as well as Upper and Lower Egypt.

The regions of Nubia, Sudan and Egypt are considered by some to be the
cradle of civilization. Today the term Nubian has become inclusive of
Africans, African Arabs, African Americans and people of color in
general.

The history of the Nubians is closely linked with that of ancient Egypt.

Images of early Gods are not unlike those found on heiroglyphs of Egyptian Gods - with heads of animals and birds.

More than fifty ancient pyramids and royal tombs rise out of the desert
sands at Meroe. They are Sudan's best-preserved pyramids, and one of
Africa's best-kept secrets.

Like the Egyptians, the Kushites believed in a life after death. This
was thought to because a continuation of life on earth. For them, the
afterlife resembled this one, and they built huge graves as an enduring
home for the dead. The unique social position of the pharaoh, as god on
earth, was reflected in his tomb.

The king was the son of Amun-Pa the sun god and as such embodied the sun
on earth. Like the sun, his life followed a cyclical plan. His youth
resembled the sun rising, his maturity was like the sun at noon and his
old age was comparable with the setting sun. When the king died the sun
disappeared below the horizon and darkness fell.

Mythology recounted that the dying or setting sun travelled through the
underworld in its journey towards the east where it was to be reborn at
the dawn of the day. From time immemorial the pyramid represented the
rising sun and the resurrection, and people believed that a tomb in this
shape would offer the dead king the chance of rising out of death. The
pyramid was seen as a ladder up to heaven enabling the dead king's soul
to travel and join the gods in the heavens. At night time the king,
assuming the shape of Osiris, god of the afterlife and resurrection,
descended in the barque of the sun god Ra and, having become one with
this god, sailed through the bouts of darkness.

Building pyramids ceased towards the end of the Middle Kingdom period.
The pharaohs of the New Kingdom constructed their graves in caves with
underground rooms and passages symbolizing the nightly sojourn of the
sun god. The black pharaohs of the Kushite Dynasty and their descendants
readopted the old pyramids for their tombs. The number of pyramids in
Nubia, where a total of 223 bas been round, fat exceeds that of Egypt.

The pyramids of Nubia have three important sections. These are: 1) an
underground burial place symbolizing the underworld, where the mummy lies; 2) a
massive steep pyramid above, symbolizing the ladder up to heaven; 3) a small
chapel on the eastern side where sacrifices could bc placed, intended to sustain
the dead king on his travels. Perhaps the doors to this chapel would be
opened by a priest at sunrise so that the light could shine in on the stela that
was placed against the rear wall. The chapel thus also functioned as a place of
prayer connected with the cult of the dead.

The underground graves of the Nubian pyramids were richly decorated. The
mummified kings and queens were laid upon beds in accordance with the ancient
tradition of Kerma. So that the dead monarch would not have to work
in the afterlife, their tombs were filled with shabtis, small statues of people
which in a magical manner would come to life when summoned by the gods to
perform tasks.

Pyramids from the Northern Cemetery at Meroe, 3rd c. B.C. to
4th c. A.D. By the 4th c. B.C., the Kushite kings had moved south to
the Sudanese savannah and built a capitol at Meroe. Here southern
cultural traditions slowly prevailed over the cultural heritage of Egypt.

Ruins of the Merotic temple at Musawwarat es-Sufra. This temple
complex, called the "Great Enclosure", lies south of Meroë near the
Sixth Cataract. It may have been a pilgrammage center or a royal
palace. A number of towns were located on the banks of the
Atbara, Blue Nile and White Nile, in which lived craftsmen who met
local needs and exported along the trade route that ran from Red
Sea port towns in the East to beyond Lake Chad in the West. This
route eventually connected to the major center of iron production
in Jenne Jeno.

Elephant statue from the "Great Enclosure" at Musawwarat
es-Sufra temple. Elephants served a military function, but the
cultural influence from the South is apparently the reason for their
having a religious significance, now lost to us.

The Lion Temple of Naqa. The architectural style is Egyptian. The
entrance reliefs show the king and queen striking their enemies.
The queen reflects Merotic culture in both her importance being
equal to that of the king, but also in her figure style.

Relief from the Lion Temple at Naga, south of Meroë at the Sixth
Cataract. King Natakamani stands before the lion god, Apedemek,
and also Horus and Amun. The king's robe and the sash draped
over his right shoulder, which is typical of Merotic dress. The
Sudanese god Apedemek slowly displaced the divinities of Egypt.

Nubian Priestess - linked to creational forces -
the return of the feminine energies -
the tones of the dolphin
the flight of the dove - transition -
the flow of the collective unconscious through
which all things are created

The earliest inhabitants of what is now The Sudan can be traced to African (i.e., Negroid) peoples who
lived in the vicinity of Khartoum, the Sudan, in Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) times (30,000-20,000
BC). They were hunters and gatherers who made pottery and (later) objects of ground sandstone.
Toward the end of the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age; 10,000-3,000 BC) they had domesticated
animals. These Africans were clearly in contact with predynastic civilizations (before c. 2925 BC) to the
north in Egypt, but the arid uplands separating Egypt from Nubia appear to have discouraged the
predynastic Egyptians from settling there.

At the end of the 4th millennium BC, kings of Egypt's 1st dynasty conquered upper
Nubia south of Aswan, introducing Egyptian cultural influence to the African
peoples who were scattered along the riverbank. In subsequent centuries, Nubia
was subjected to successive military expeditions from Egypt in search of slaves or
building materials for royal tombs, which destroyed much of the Egyptian-Nubian
culture that had sprung from the initial conquests of the 1st dynasty.

Throughout
these few centuries (c. 2925-c. 2575 BC), the descendants of the Nubians
continued to eke out an existence along the Nile River, an easy prey to Egyptian
military expeditions. Although the Nubians were no match for the armies of Egypt's
Old Kingdom, the interactions arising from their enslavement and colonization led
to ever-increasing African influence upon the art, culture, and religion of dynastic
Egypt.

Sometime after about 2181, in the period known to Egyptologists as the First
Intermediate Period (c. 2130-1938), a new wave of immigrants entered Nubia from
Libya, in the west, where the increasing desiccation of the Sahara drove them to
settle along the Nile as cattle farmers. Other branches of these people seem to
have gone beyond the Nile to the Red Sea Hills, while still others pushed south and
west to Wadai and Darfur.

These newcomers were able to settle on the Nile and
assimilate the existing Nubians without opposition from Egypt. After the fall of the
6th dynasty (c. 2150), Egypt experienced more than a century of weakness and
internal strife, giving the immigrants in Nubia time to develop their own distinct
civilization with unique crafts, architecture, and social structure, virtually
unhindered by the potentially more dynamic civilization to the north.

With the
advent of the 11th dynasty (2081), however, Egypt recovered its strength and
pressed southward into Nubia, at first sending only sporadic expeditions to exact
tribute, but by the 12th dynasty (1938-1756) effectively occupying Nubia as far
south as Semna.

The Nubians resisted the Egyptian occupation, which was
maintained only by a chain of forts erected along the Nile. Egyptian military and
trading expeditions, of course, penetrated beyond Semna, and Egyptian fortified
trading posts were actually established to the south at Karmah in order to protect
against frequent attacks upon Egyptian trading vessels by Nubian tribesmen
beyond the southern frontier.

Despite the Egyptian presence in upper Nubia, the indigenous culture of the
region continued to flourish. This culture was deeply influenced by African peoples
in the south and was little changed by the proximity of Egyptian garrisons or the
imports of luxury articles by Egyptian traders. Indeed, the Egyptianization of Nubia
appears to have actually been enhanced during the decline in Egypt's political
control over Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1630-1540 BC), when
Nubians were employed in large numbers as mercenaries against the Asian Hyksos
invaders of Egypt.

This experience did more to introduce Egyptian culture, which
the mercenaries absorbed while fighting in Egyptian armies, than did the preceding
centuries of Egyptian military occupation. Conversely, the presence of these
mercenaries in Egypt contributed to the growing African influence within Egyptian
culture.

The defeat of the Hyksos was the result of a national rising of the Egyptians who,
once they had expelled the Hyksos from the Nile valley, turned their energies
southward to reestablish the military occupation of Nubia that the Hyksos invasion
had disrupted. Under Thutmose I (reigned 1493-c. 1482 BC) the Egyptian
conquest of the northern Sudan was completed as far as Kurqus, 50 miles south
of Abu Hamad, and subsequent Egyptian military expeditions penetrated even
farther up the Nile.

This third Egyptian occupation was the most complete and the
most enduring, for despite sporadic rebellions against Egyptian control Nubia was
divided into two administrative units: Wawat in the north, with its provincial capital
at Aswan, and Kush (also spelled Cush) in the south, with its headquarters at
Napata (Marawi). Nubia as a whole was governed by a viceroy, usually a member
of the royal entourage, who was responsible to the Egyptian pharaoh.

Under him
were two deputies, one for Wawat and one for Kush, and a hierarchy of lesser
officials. The bureaucracy was staffed chiefly by Egyptians, but Egyptianized
Nubians were not uncommon. Colonies of Egyptian officials, traders, and priests
surrounded the administrative centres, but beyond these outposts the Nubians
continued to preserve their own distinct traditions, customs, and crafts. A
syncretistic culture thus arose in Kush, fashioned by that of Egypt to the north
and those of African peoples to the south.

Kush's position athwart the trade routes from Egypt to the Red Sea, and from the
Nile to the south and west, brought considerable wealth from far-off places.
Moreover, its cultivated areas along the Nile were rich, and in the hills the gold
and emerald mines produced bullion and jewels for Egypt. The Nubians were also
highly valued as soldiers.

As Egypt slipped once again into decline at the close of the New Kingdom (11th
century BC), the viceroys of Kush, supported by their Nubian armies, became
virtually independent kings, free of Egyptian control. By the 8th century BC, the
kings of Kush came from hereditary ruling families of Egyptianized Nubian chiefs
who possessed neither political nor family ties with Egypt.

Under one such king,
Kashta, Kush acquired control of Upper (i.e., southern) Egypt, and under his son
Piankhi (c. 750-c. 719 BC), the whole of Egypt to the shores of the Mediterranean
was brought under the administration of Kush.

As a world power, however, Kush
was not to last. Just when the kings of Kush had established their rule from Abu
Hamad to the Nile delta, the Assyrians invaded Egypt (671 BC) and with their
superior iron-forged weapons defeated the armies of Kush under the redoubtable
Taharqa; by 654 the Kushites had been driven back to Nubia and the safety of
their capital, Napata.

Although reduced from a great power to an isolated kingdom behind the barren
hills that blocked the southward advance from Aswan, Kush continued to rule over
the middle Nile for another thousand years. Its unique Egyptian-Nubian culture with
its strong African accretions was preserved, while that of Egypt came under
Persian, Greek, and Roman influences.

Although Egyptianized in many ways, the
culture of Kush was not simply Egyptian civilization in a Nubian environment. The
Kushites developed their own language, expressed first by Egyptian hieroglyphs,
then their own, and finally by a cursive script. They worshiped Egyptian gods but
did not abandon their own. They buried their kings in pyramids but not in the
Egyptian fashion.

Their wealth continued to flow from the mines and to grow with
their control of the trade routes. Soon after the retreat from Egypt the capital
was moved from Napata southward to Meroe near Shandi, where the kingdom was
increasingly exposed to the long-established African cultures farther south at the
very time when its ties with Egypt were rapidly disappearing. The subsequent
history of Kush is one of gradual decay, ending with inglorious extinction in AD 350
by the king of Aksum, who marched down from the Ethiopian highlands, destroyed
Meroe, and sacked the decrepit towns along the river.

Medieval Christian Kingdoms

The 200 years from the fall of Kush to the middle of the 6th century is an unknown
age in the Sudan. Nubia was inhabited by a people called the Nobatae by the
ancient geographers and the X-Group by modern archaeologists, who are still at a
loss to explain their origins.

The X-Group were clearly, however, the heirs of Kush,
for their whole cultural life was dominated by Meroitic crafts and customs, and
occasionally they even felt themselves sufficiently strong, in alliance with the
nomadic Blemmyes (the Beja of the eastern Sudan), to attack the Romans in Upper
Egypt. When this happened, the Romans retaliated, defeating the Nobatae and
Blemmyes and driving them into obscurity once again.

When the Sudan was once more brought into the orbit of the Mediterranean world
by the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 6th century, the middle course of the
Nile was divided into three kingdoms: Nobatia, with its capital at Pachoras (modern
Faras); Maqurrah, with its capital at Dunqulah (Old Dongola); and the kingdom of
'Alwah in the south, with its capital at Subah (Soba) near what is now Khartoum.

Between 543 and 575 these three kingdoms were converted to Christianity by
the work of Julian, a missionary who proselytized among the Nobatia (543-545),
and his successor Longinus, who between 569 and 575 consolidated the work of
Julian in Nobatia and even carried Christianity to 'Alwah in the south. The new
religion appears to have been adopted with considerable enthusiasm. Christian
churches sprang up along the Nile, and ancient temples were refurbished to
accommodate Christian worshipers.

After the retirement of Longinus, however, the
Sudan once again receded into a period about which little is known, and it did not
reemerge into the stream of recorded history until the coming of the Arabs in the
middle of the 7th century.

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632, the Arabs erupted from the
desert steppes of Arabia and overran the lands to the east and west. Egypt was
invaded in 639, and small groups of Arab raiders penetrated up the Nile and
pillaged along the frontier of the kingdom of Maqurrah, which by the 7th century
had absorbed the state of Nobatia. Raid and counterraid between the Arabs and
the Nubians followed until a well-equipped Arab expedition under 'Abd Allah ibn
Sa'd ibn Abi Sarh was sent south to punish the Nubians.

The Arabs marched as far
as Dunqulah, laid siege to the town, and destroyed the Christian cathedral. They
suffered heavy casualties, however, so that when the king of Maqurrah sought an
armistice, 'Abd Allah ibn Sa'd agreed to peace, happy to extricate his battered
forces from a precarious position.

Arab-Nubian relations were subsequently
regularized by an annual exchange of gifts, by trade relations, and by the mutual
understanding that no Muslims were to settle in Nubia and no Nubians were to
take up residence in Egypt.

With but few interruptions this peaceful, commercial
relationship lasted for nearly six centuries, its very success undoubtedly the
result of the mutual advantage that both the Arabs and the Nubians derived from
it. The Arabs had a stable frontier; they appear to have had no designs to occupy
the Sudan and were probably discouraged from doing so by the arid plains south
of Aswan.

Peace on the frontier was their object, and this the treaty guaranteed.
In return, the kingdom of Maqurrah gained another 600 years of life.

Islamic Encroachments

When non-Arab Muslims acquired control of the Nile delta, friction arose in Upper
Egypt. In the 9th century the Turkish Tulunid rulers of Egypt, wishing to rid
themselves of the unruly nomadic Arab tribes in their domain, encouraged them to
migrate southward. Lured by the prospects of gold in the Nubian Desert, the
nomads pressed into Nubia, raiding and pillaging along borders, but the heartland
of Maqurrah remained free from direct hostilities until the Mamluks established
their control over Egypt (1250).

In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the
Mamluk sultans sent regular military expeditions against Maqurrah, as much to rid
Egypt of uncontrollable Arab Bedouins as to capture Nubia. The Mamluks never
succeeded in actually occupying Maqurrah, but they devastated the country,
draining its political and economic vitality and plunging it into chaos and
depression.

By the 15th century Dunqulah was no longer strong enough to
withstand Arab encroachment, and the country was open to Arab immigration.
Once the Arab nomads, particularly the Juhaynah people, learned that the land
beyond the Aswan reach could support their herds and that no political authority
had the power to turn them back, they began to migrate southward, intermarrying
with the Nubians and introducing Arabic Muslim culture to the Christian inhabitants.

The Arabs, who inherited through the male line, soon acquired control from the
Nubians, who inherited through the female line, intermarriage resulting in Nubian
inheritances passing from Nubian women to their half-Arab sons, but the Arabs
replaced political authority in Maqurrah only with their own nomadic institutions.

From Dunqulah the Juhaynah and others wandered east and west of the Nile with
their herds; in the south the kingdom of 'Alwah stood as the last indigenous
Christian barrier to Arab occupation of the Sudan.

'Alwah extended from Kabushiyah as far south as Sennar (Sannar). Beyond, from
the Ethiopian escarpment to the White Nile, lived peoples about which little is
known. 'Alwah appears to have been much more prosperous and stronger than
Maqurrah. It preserved the ironworking techniques of Kush, and its capital at
Subah possessed many impressive buildings, churches, and gardens.

Christianity
remained the state religion, but 'Alwah's long isolation from the Christian world had
probably resulted in bizarre and syncretistic accretions to liturgy and ritual. 'Alwah
was able to maintain its integrity so long as the Arabs failed to combine against it,
but the continuous and corrosive raids of the Bedouins throughout the 15th
century clearly weakened its power to resist. Thus, when an Arab confederation
led by 'Abd Allah Jamma' was at last brought together to assault the Christian
kingdom, 'Alwah collapsed (c. 1500). Subah and the Blue Nile region were
abandoned, left to the Funj, who suddenly appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to
establish their authority from Sennar to the main Nile.

The Funj were a strange and mysterious people. They were neither Arabs nor
Muslims, and their homeland was probably on the upper Blue Nile in the
borderlands between Ethiopia and the Sudan. Under their leader, 'Amarah Dunqas,
the Funj founded their capital at Sennar and throughout the 16th century
struggled for control of the Al-Jazirah (Gezira) region against the Arab tribes who
had settled around the confluence of the Blue and the White Niles. The Funj
appear to have firmly established their supremacy by 1607-08.

By the mid-17th century the Funj dynasty had reached its golden age under one
of its greatest kings, Badi II Abu Daqn (reigned 1644/45-80), who extended Funj
authority across the White Nile into Kordofan and reduced the tribal chieftaincies
scattered northward along the main Nile to tribute-paying feudatories. But as Badi
expanded Funj power, he also planted the seeds of its decline. During his
conquests, slaves were captured and taken to Sennar, where, as they grew in
numbers and influence, they formed a military caste.

Loyal to the monarch alone,
the slaves soon came to compete with the Funj aristocracy for control of the
offices of state. Intrigue and hostility between these two rival groups soon led to
open rebellion that undermined the position of the traditional ruling class.

Under
Badi IV Abu Shulukh (reigned 1724-62), the ruling aristocracy was finally broken,
and the king assumed arbitrary power, supported by his slave troops. So long as
Badi IV could command the loyalty of his army, his position was secure and the
kingdom enjoyed respite from internal strife, but at the end of his long reign he
could no longer control the army. Under the leadership of his viceroy in Kordofan,
Abu Likaylik, the military turned against the king and exiled him to Subah.

Abu
Likaylik probably represented a resurgence of older indigenous elements who had
been Arabized and Islamized but were neither Arab nor Funj.

Thenceforward, the
Funj kings were but puppets of their viziers (chief ministers), whose struggles to
win and to keep control precipitated the kingdom into steady decline, interrupted
by only infrequent periods of peace and stability established by a strong vizier
who was able to overcome his rivals.

During its last half century the Funj kingdom
was a spent state, kept intact only through want of a rival, but gradually
disintegrating through wars, intrigue, and conspiracy, until the Egyptians advanced
on Sennar in 1821 and pushed the Funj empire into oblivion.
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The Funj were originally non-Muslims, but the aristocracy soon adopted Islam and,
although they retained many traditional African customs, remained nominal Muslims.
The conversion was largely the work of a handful of Islamic missionaries who came
to the Sudan from the larger Muslim world. The great success of these
missionaries, however, was not among the Funj themselves but among the
Arabized Nubian population settled along the Nile.

Among these villagers the
missionaries instilled a deep devotion to Islam that appears to have been
conspicuously absent among the nomadic Arabs who first reached the Sudan after
the collapse of the kingdom of Maqurrah. One early missionary was Ghulam Allah ibn
'A'id from the Yemen, who settled at Dunqulah in the 14th century. He was
followed in the 15th century by Hamad Abu Danana, who appears to have
emphasized the way to God through mystical exercises rather than through the
more orthodox interpretations of the Qur'an taught by Ghulam Allah.

The spread of Islam was advanced in the 16th century, when the hegemony of the
Funj enhanced security. In the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous schools of
religious learning were founded along the White Nile, and the Shayqiyah
confederacy was converted. Many of the more famous Sudanese missionaries who
followed them were Sufi holy men, members of influential religious brotherhoods
who sought the way to God through mystical contemplation.

The Sufi brotherhoods
themselves played a vital role in linking the Sudan to the larger world of Islam
beyond the Nile valley. Although the fervour of Sudanese Islam waned after 1700,
the great reform movements that shook the Muslim world in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries produced a revivalist spirit among the Sufi brotherhoods,
giving rise to a new order, the Mirghaniyah or Khatmiyah, later one of the
strongest in the modern Sudan.

These men, called faqihs, attracted a following by their teachings and piety and
laid the foundations for a long line of indigenous Sudanese holy men. The latter
passed on the way to God taught them by their masters, or founded their own
religious schools, or, if extraordinarily successful, gathered their own following into
a religious order. The faqihs played a vital role in educating their followers and
helped place them in the highest positions of government, by which they were
able to spread Islam and the influence of their respective brotherhoods.

The
faqihs held a religious monopoly until the introduction, under Egyptian-Ottoman rule
(see below), of an official hierarchy of jurists and scholars, the 'ulama', whose
orthodox legalistic conception of Islam was as alien to the Sudanese as were their
origins.

This disparity between the mystical, traditional faqihs, close to the
Sudanese, if not of them, and the orthodox, Islamic jurists, aloof, if not actually
part of the government bureaucracy, created a rivalry that in the past produced
open hostility in times of trouble and sullen suspicion in times of peace. Recently,
this schism has diminished; the faqih continues his customary practices
unmolested, while the Sudanese have acknowledged the position of the 'ulama' in
society.

Egyptian-Ottoman rule

Muhammad 'Ali and his successors

In July 1820, Muhammad 'Ali, viceroy of Egypt under the Ottoman Turks, sent an
army under his son Isma'il to conquer the Sudan. Muhammad 'Ali was interested in
the gold and slaves that the Sudan could provide and wished to control the vast
hinterland south of Egypt. By 1821 the Funj and the sultan of Darfur had
surrendered to his forces, and the Nilotic Sudan from Nubia to the Ethiopian
foothills and from the 'Atbarah River to Darfur became part of his expanding
empire.

The collection of taxes under Muhammad 'Ali's regime amounted to virtual
confiscation of gold, livestock, and slaves, and opposition to his rule became
intense, eventually erupting into rebellion and the murder of Isma'il and his
bodyguard. But the rebels lacked leadership and coordination, and their revolt
was brutally suppressed. A sullen hostility in the Sudanese was met by continued
repression until the appointment of 'Ali Khurshid Agha as governor-general in
1826.

His administration marked a new era in Egyptian-Sudanese relations. He
reduced taxes and consulted the Sudanese through the respected Sudanese
leader 'Abd al-Qadir wad az-Zayn. Letters of amnesty were granted to fugitives. A
more equitable system of taxation was implemented, and the support of the
powerful class of holy men and sheikhs (tribal chiefs) for the administration was
obtained by exempting them from taxation.

But 'Ali Khurshid was not content
merely to restore the Sudan to its previous condition. Under his initiative trade
routes were protected and expanded, Khartoum was developed as the
administrative capital, and a host of agricultural and technical improvements were
undertaken. When he retired to Cairo in 1838, Khurshid left a prosperous and
contented country behind him.

His successor, Ahmad Pasha Abu Widan, with but few exceptions, continued his
policies and made it his primary concern to root out official corruption. Abu Widan
dealt ruthlessly with offenders or those who sought to thwart his schemes to
reorganize taxation. He was particularly fond of the army, which reaped the
benefits of regular pay and tolerable conditions in return for the brunt of the
expansion and consolidation of Egyptian administration in Kassala and among the
Baqqarah Arabs of southern Kordofan. Muhammad 'Ali, suspecting Abu Widan of
disloyalty, recalled him to Cairo in the autumn of 1843, but he died mysteriously,
many believed of poison, before he left the Sudan.

During the next two decades the country stagnated because of ineffective
government at Khartoum and vacillation by the viceroys at Cairo. If the successors
of Abu Widan possessed administrative talent, they were seldom able to
demonstrate it. No governor-general held office long enough to introduce his own
plans, let alone carry on those of his predecessor.

New schemes were never
begun, and old projects were allowed to languish. Without direction the army and
the bureaucracy became demoralized and indifferent, while the Sudanese became
disgruntled with the government. In 1856 the viceroy Sa'id Pasha visited the Sudan
and, shocked by what he saw, contemplated abandoning it altogether. Instead, he
abolished the office of governor-general and had each Sudanese province report
directly to the viceregal authority in Cairo. This state of affairs persisted until the
more dynamic viceroy Isma'il took over the guidance of Egyptian and Sudanese
affairs in 1862.

During these quiescent decades, however, two ominous developments began that
presaged future problems. Reacting to pressure from the Western powers,
particularly Great Britain, the governor-general of the Sudan was ordered to halt
the slave trade. But not even the viceroy himself could overcome established
custom with the stroke of a pen and the erection of a few police posts.

If the
restriction of the slave trade precipitated resistance among the Sudanese, the
appointment of Christian officials to the administration and the expansion of the
European Christian community in the Sudan caused open resentment. European
merchants, mostly of Mediterranean origin, were either ignored or tolerated by
the Sudanese and confined their contacts to compatriots within their own
community and to the Turko-Egyptian officials whose manners and dress they
frequently adopted. They became a powerful and influential group, whose lasting
contribution to the Sudan was to take the lead in opening the White Nile and the
southern Sudan to navigation and commerce after Muhammad 'Ali had abolished
state trading monopolies in the Sudan in 1838 under pressure from the European
powers.

In 1863, Isma'il Pasha became viceroy of Egypt. Educated in Egypt, Vienna, and
Paris, Isma'il had absorbed the European interest in overseas adventures as well
as Muhammad 'Ali's desire for imperial expansion and had imaginative schemes for
transforming Egypt and the Sudan into a modern state by employing Western
technology.

First he hoped to acquire the rest of the Nile basin, including the
southern Sudan and the Bantu states by the great lakes of central Africa. To
finance this vast undertaking, and his projects for the modernization of Egypt
itself, Isma'il turned to the capital-rich nations of western Europe, where investors
were willing to risk their savings at high rates of interest in the cause of Egyptian
and African development.

But such funds would be attracted only as long as Isma'il
demonstrated his interest in reform by intensifying the campaign against the slave
trade in the Sudan. Isma'il needed no encouragement, for he required the
diplomatic and financial support of the European powers in his efforts to
modernize Egypt and expand his empire. Thus, these two major themes of Isma'il's
rule of the Nilotic Sudan--imperial expansion and the suppression of the slave
trade--became intertwined, culminating in a third major development, the
introduction of an ever-increasing number of European Christians to carry out the
task of modernization.

In 1869 Isma'il commissioned the Englishman Samuel Baker to lead an expedition up
the White Nile to establish Egyptian hegemony over the equatorial regions of
central Africa and to curtail the slave trade on the upper Nile. Baker remained in
equatorial Africa until 1873, where he established the Equatoria province as part
of the Egyptian Sudan. He had extended Egyptian power and curbed the slave
traders on the Nile, but he had also alienated certain African tribes and, being a
rather tactless Christian, Isma'il's Muslim administrators as well. Moreover, Baker
had struck only at the Nilotic slave trade.

To the west, on the vast plains of the
Bahr Al-Ghazal (now a state of the Republic of The Sudan), slave merchants had
established enormous empires with stations garrisoned by slave soldiers.

From
these stations the long lines of human chattels were sent overland through Darfur
and Kordofan to the slave markets of the northern Sudan, Egypt, and Arabia. Not
only did the firearms of the Khartoumers (as the traders were called) establish
their supremacy over the peoples of the interior but also those merchants with
the strongest resources gradually swallowed up lesser traders until virtually the
whole of the Bahr Al-Ghazal was controlled by the greatest slaver of them all,
az-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, more commonly known as Zubayr (or Zobeir) Pasha.

So
powerful had he become that in 1873, the year Baker retired from the Sudan, the
Egyptian viceroy (now called the khedive) appointed Zubayr governor of the Bahr
Al-Ghazal. Isma'il's officials had failed to destroy Zubayr as Baker had crushed the
slavers east of the Nile, and to elevate Zubayr to the governorship appeared the
only way to establish at least the nominal sovereignty of Cairo over that enormous
province. Thus, the agents of Zubayr continued to pillage the Bahr Al-Ghazal under
the Egyptian flag, while officially Egypt extended its dominion to the tropical
rainforests of the Congo region. Zubayr remained in detention in Cairo.

Isma'il next offered the governorship of the Equatoria province to another
Englishman, Charles George Gordon, who in China had won fame and the sobriquet
Chinese Gordon. Gordon arrived in Equatoria in 1874. His object was the same as
Baker's--to consolidate Egyptian authority in Equatoria and to establish Egyptian
sovereignty over the kingdoms of the great East African lakes. He achieved some
success in the former and none in the latter. When Gordon retired from Equatoria,
the lake kingdoms remained stubbornly independent.

In 1877 Isma'il appointed Gordon governor-general of the Sudan. Gordon was a
European and a Christian. He returned to the Sudan to lead a crusade against the
slave trade, and, to assist him in this humanitarian enterprise, he surrounded
himself with a cadre of European and American Christian officials. In 1877 Isma'il
had signed the Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention, which provided for the
termination of the sale and purchase of slaves in the Sudan by 1880. Gordon set
out to fulfill the terms of this treaty, and in whirlwind tours through the country he
broke up the markets and imprisoned the traders. His European subordinates did
the same in the provinces.

Gordon's crusading zeal blinded him to his invidious position as a Christian in a
Muslim land and obscured from him the social and economic effects of arbitrary
repression. Not only did his campaign create a crisis in the Sudan's economy but
the Sudanese soon came to believe that the crusade, led by European Christians,
violated the principles and traditions of Islam.

By 1879 a strong current of reaction
against Gordon's reforms was running through the country. The powerful
slave-trading interests had, of course, turned against the administration, while the
ordinary villagers and nomads, who habitually blamed the government for any
difficulties, were quick to associate economic depression with Gordon's
Christianity. And then suddenly, in the middle of rising discontent in the Sudan,
Isma'il's financial position collapsed. In difficulties for years, he could now no longer
pay the interest on the Egyptian debt, and an international commission was
appointed by the European powers to oversee Egyptian finances. After 16 years
of glorious spending, Isma'il sailed away into exile. Gordon resigned.

Gordon left a perilous situation in the Sudan. The Sudanese were confused and
dissatisfied. Many of the ablest senior officials, both European and Egyptian, had
been dismissed by Gordon, departed with him, or died in his service. Castigated
and ignored by Gordon, the bureaucracy had lapsed into apathy. Moreover, the
office of governor-general, on which the administration was so dependent,
devolved upon Muhammad Ra'uf Pasha, a mild man, ill-suited to stem the current of
discontent or to shore up the structure of Egyptian rule, particularly when he
could no longer count on Egyptian resources. Such then was the Sudan in June of
1881 when Muhammad Ahmad declared himself to be the Mahdi ("the divinely
guided one").